TEXAS LEGISLATURE: Senate OKs water, education bill

Legislation helps nail down budget plans

Pieces of the budget and a plan to secure Texas' water future fell into place Wednesday night.

After a week of negotiations, the Senate passed House Bill 1025, which holds $201.7 million for public education and $2 billion for water projects.

The $2 billion for water projects came as the House approved Senate Joint Resolution 1, which would let voters approve or reject a constitutional amendment to establish the fund. The constitutional resolution lets lawmakers avoid breaking a spending cap set by the Texas Constitution.

"I think that we've ended up with a very good product here," said Sen. Tommy Williams, R-The Woodlands, the Senate's chief budget writer, about the passage of HB 1025.

The water fund that SJR 1 would establish would act as a bank that communities or entities could borrow from and then pay back to finance water projects.

The $200 million for education was the number Democrats were waiting on to decide whether they would vote in favor of SJR 1, said Rep. Abel Herrero, D-Robstown. Herrero ran his campaign on restoring the $5.4 billion cut from public education in the last legislative session, when lawmakers faced a $27 billion shortfall.

Altogether, lawmakers will end up putting in about $3.9 billion more to public education if other pieces of the budget go through.

The House needed Democratic help to pass SJR 1 since the resolution required a two-thirds vote.

The $2 billion for water projects would come from the Rainy Day Fund, a sacrosanct fund for conservatives that is properly called the Economic Stabilization Fund. The vote passed 130-16, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst announced in the Senate.

The bill to bring more school money and the water money, HB 1025, was a supplemental appropriations bill, which are generally meant to pay for unforeseen expenses from the previous budget.

The money also included $185 million from the Rainy Day Fund for wildfire damages during the past two years and $1.75 billion from that fund to reverse a deferred payment to schools — a move made last session to balance the budget.

Sen. Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock, called the bill "constructive and conservative."

HB 1025 includes transportation funding as well, with $450 million going to counties where roads have been damaged by activity from the oil and gas industry.

Texas Department of Public Transportation officials have told lawmakers they would need an additional $4 billion per year after 2015 to handle congestion and maintenance.

"The one thing we've fallen short on is transportation funding," Williams said.

Now lawmakers in opposite chambers will need to give approval to the bills' passages, given that the bills look drastically different from what was in them before. Both sides had been negotiating behind the scenes on HB 1025 and SJR 1, along with the formal budget SB 1 and other pieces, such as SB 6 and SB 7 that help end budget gimmicks of hoarding money that was meant for special purposes but is instead used solely to balance the budget.

"We're still not done," Herrero said.

Even so, Rep. Allan Ritter, R-Nederland, the representative who carried pieces of legislation earlier that would've made the fund and put in $2 billion for water, smiled as he walked into a House chamber still working on other bills.